Slashdot Mirror
On the Future of Linux Weekly News
Trevelyan writes "This article on LWN shows they are not alone, it seems that since they announced they will finish 1 August, loads of people have been emailing their support, and donating money, $12,000 as of this writing."
Maybe they should read the Kuro5hin stories on this subject?
1. The fundraiser ends, and the next stage begins (Support Kuro5hin, Kuro5hin.org)
posted by rusty on 06/21/2002 11:23:29 AM EST
123 comments
2. Day two wrapup, and a change of plans (Support Kuro5hin, Kuro5hin.org)
posted by rusty on 06/20/2002 08:21:06 AM EST
84 comments
3. Day one wrapup, and a special day two gift (Support Kuro5hin, Kuro5hin.org)
posted by rusty on 06/19/2002 10:20:36 AM EST
186 comments
4. The Future of K5, and the First Ever Kuro5hin Fundraising Drive (Support Kuro5hin, Focus On...)
posted by rusty on 06/18/2002 07:26:16 AM EST
358 comments
5. We're Broke: The Economics of a Web Community (Meta, Kuro5hin.org)
posted by rusty on 06/17/2002 04:18:46 AM EST
737 comments
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I'm back from 10 days holidays, and I'm very sad to learn that Linux Weekly News is going to end. It's really one of the best Linux news site, and deserves to stay alive until they can find a real business model so they can pay all the contributors. Why wouldn't they provide paying archives or provide extra services (instant Linux news or rumours, Linux people connecting (for business for instance)...). It seems Mandrake found its way to profitability, so I'm sure Linux Weekly News can also do it!
The Linux community *needs* LWN, so please stay alive!
I'm going to provide them right now my $5 paypal & a wire transfert of 50 Eur.
Free Software is all good and dandy. But as is noticed by MANY Open Source Software, there are in fact mortgages to pay, taxes to pay, etc.
And what I see is that Open Source and etc individuals are cheap skates. Ok I donate 10 dollars, but is that really what our work is worth?
I think we need to get it through our heads that yes LINUX and Open Source did change the game. But the game is not free, just lower costs. So instead of paying 800 USD for a development environment, we need to start coughing up 99 USD for a development environment.
Imagine how much further Open Source would be IF everybody who uses Open Source were to donate 1000 USD per year. Why 1000 USD? MS developers typically pay about 3K for their MSDN, plus other extras. I just decided to put something that I think anybody who makes a living from software could afford, EVEN when unemployed.
When you do that type of math then Open Source does make economic sense...
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
If you examine the burn rate and remaining cahs on hand, it's clear that VA Linux will be bankrupt within a year.
Slashdot is like a rich man's trophy wife - expensive to keep, but good for showing off to other people. VA Linux may try to get rid of this noose around their neck. Maybe by selling it, maybe by giving it back to Malda & co. But even then, can slashdot support itself? I doubt it. It's too big, too expensive to run and maintain. The slashdot community won't donate enough to cover costs. Especially when lameness filters and other policies alienate people towards other sites.
A shame, really.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
What makes you think Open source companies are any different? We should be shocked if any succeed given the number of market and institutional impediments they face.
It took at least two hundred years for the existing business model to develop. Expect it to take more than a few years for a new model to take hold. The inroads Open Source has mode so far are nothing short of phenomenal.
Even Microsoft is starting to see the writing on the wall. Software as a retail item is an all but dead model. that is why they are pushing for a service based model. That is why they see Open Source as such a threat. I've said it before and I'll say it again,"What happens when Open Source matches commercial quality and usability? What happens when software becomes a commodity?". My answer is that you have to sell the service. You will still need someone to install, maintain, customize and use the software. For most, the software is the tool. Like a hammer to build a house.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
Your friend is willing to put 2 hrs of his day into writing that piece of code. More power to him. But what does he miss from those 2 hrs? Does he have a family? A girlfriend? (True) Friends? Does he like to do other things besides coding?
And, he is doing it because he wants "to see his code used extensively by other projects". This is hardly selfless, don't you think?
People at LWN have a life. They also like what they do, but they decided to choose what's truly important to them. In doing that, they said, "Sorry, we can't go on like this. We're going to stop." But the public said to them "Please don't." and they started providing for them to go on. It's good that they did. Maybe the coders should start asking for money, too. And, if they don't. Maybe they should choose what's really important to them.
So did Taco et al actually get rich off the stock thing? I know unlike the general public they had to wait to sell the stock. On paper they were worth a boatload a while ago. So did they have to chance to sell before the stock tanked? If they did,they would certainly have plenty of cash to buy and run the site on their own. Just wondering.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
LWN's problem, as the market stands today, is that a website by itself is unable to bring in sufficient revenue to support full time employees, let alone multiple full time employees. Even considering the $12K in donations, that will not last more than a month, by their salary standards, and chances are good that will not be a repeating phenomenon as the slashdot link was probably responsible for a good part of it.
Advertising as they've stated won't cover their expenses. And the level of advertising that will probably will be so annoying that it will drive off too many people. I've noticed this problem with my own site. Even a small banner ad would clutter up the page too much, and would probably bring me less than $100 a month anyway.
Subscriptions are a possibility assuming anyone would pay them. $1 a month from every one of the lwn regulars would pay their requested salaries with NO problem. However, most people won't subscribe even if they feel the content is worth it. There is plenty of material out there for free. Being forced to support something doesn't usually win you many fans.
You could always gather personal data and sell it to marketers, but that's just slimy and will piss people off more than subscriptions would.
Then there are donations. While donations are great so long as they're completely unconditional, that's not always the case. I've got people that bitch because I don't have a domain. So every once in a while someone offers to send me $10 so I can get one. Problem is, I won't spend that $10 on a domain, I'll use it to pay my water bill, rent, or something else that's far more important to me than a domain is. That donator would feel shafted, and I would understand that. If his money was going to the site itself, the donation would be justified, but when it goes to pay for my own peronal expenses, it feels more like charity. Donations would certainly help, but the added burden of assumed obligation would create more problems than its worth. In LWN's case, its pretty clear that the donations are going to pay salaries and not much else. But from the tone of their most recent report on the issue, it would seem that some people might not have been aware of that fact.
The only option that *I* have found that would be reasonable to me and my visitors would be merchandising. Either selling site specific novelty items, or selling useful equipment. Profits from these sales could then fund both the
site and partially fund my salary, but with sales you open a new can of worms. You have customer relations, ordering, payments, warranty issues, shipment tracking, etc. Its a full time job just maintaining something like that on any significant scale. Which means that a substancial amount of the immediate profit gets churned back into the business of producing, packaging, and selling, which means, if I'm doing it, is a lot less time I'm spending on the site, which was the whole point of searching for extra revenue in the first place. Of course, to make it easy on myself, I could just take payments by check only and offer no warranty whatsoever on what I sell. A lot of people would turn away from this, but at least the cost of bringing in extra revenue would not exceed the revenue itself, and those that wish to "donate" at least get something tangible in return, regardless how I actually choose to spend the money.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
The job LWN does is quite excellent--and this sort of excellence requires real effort. You don't get that kind of quality and coverage from dilettante's who spend an hour here or there. $12k/month barely pays two IT salaries, once you count insurance, social security contribution, workers comp, and similar expenses. I own a business, I know this.
Moreover, I am also a professional writer, so I probably have a lot better idea than AirLace about just how much work goes into LWN's summaries. I don't write quite the same thing--but there is some similarity (my name is Mertz, btw, you can find what I do at IBM dW, Intel IDS, and elsewhere). I often write about a certain library or software product, and it really is a good week of work to become familiar enough with something to write a helpful 2500 words on the topic. Doing 52 such research projects a year is about what I could handle (and I'm a bright person).
What LWN does is in some respects similar. True, they only write a couple sentences about each given product... but those couple sentences are consistently accurate, clear, and informative. Each one of those sentences represents probably an hour of work. LWN covers dozens or hundreds of topics each week! Each one of them requires just this kind of research... and, well, that's a few full time workers.
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